Hostage Hot Pursuit
Location: Parkersburg, West Virginia Date: November 3, 1993 Story Near 10pm on Wednesday, November 3, 1993, Amber McClung and three other employees were working the late shift at Rax, a fast food restaurant called in Parkersburg, West Virginia, when they received a disturbing phone call, which told them that another fast food restaurant, Hardee's, which was only a block away, had just been robbed. "Jeremy and Dave were joking about it (the robbery) with each other; whenever we had a customer come in, they'd say, 'Well, maybe this is the guy,'" said Amber. 21-year-old Dave Smith was another employee working that evening. "Angie was washing dishes in the back," he said. "I love working with her because she's very goofy and bubbly." A man named John Phillips, who had recently been drinking at a bar, had robbed the Hardee's, and was armed with a handgun, came in through the employee door and announced that he was about to rob the restaurant. He put all four employees in the cooler and told them not to get out for ten minutes. They thought he had left, but the door opened again, and he came back in. "He pointed to Angie," remembered Dave, "and said, 'I want you to come with me.'" When the employees came out, 18-year-old Angie Keim, who was threatened to be killed by Phillips if they came out of the cooler, was nowhere to be seen. Phillips had cut the restaurant's phone's cord, so the three remaining employees walked outside to a pay phone and called 911, but realized that they might never see Angie again. West Virginia State Police Corporal Bill Recktenwald was on routine patrol 35 miles away, when he heard the report of the two robberies. "I got positioned where I could observe traffic flow on the Interstate," he explained. "I'd only been there approximately five minutes when a car came by, matching the description of the suspect's vehicle." Recktenwald began to follow the vehicle, which slowly increased its speed. As he caught up, close enough to read the license plate, he could only see Phillips inside. Unaware to him, Phillips had told Angie to give him directions to the nearest interstate and lie down on the floor of his vehicle, which was colored red. "I became more and more sure that this was in fact the vehicle that had committed the robberies," he said. He then began to worry that Phillips had already shot or done some kind of pain to the hostage. Units from around the area joined the pursuit, including Corporal Max Hender, who noticed Angie lying on the floor of the vehicle. Around 10:30pm, her mother, Debbie, received a call from the police, telling her that Angie had been kidnapped. Phillips began going through the median strip and traveled in the wrong direction in the opposite lane several times. Two unmarked units were placed at the front of the pursuit, including Wood County Sheriff's Detective Charlie Johnson. Detective Bruce Ripple was in the other unmarked unit. Soon, Phillips approached two eighteen wheelers that were attempting to help stop the vehicle, which was doing everything it could to get away from the police. It eventually stopped when it bumped into the guardrail. Recktenwald noticed Angie lying on the floor of the vehicle and thought Phillips had already murdered or harmed her. But as soon as he reached into the vehicle, she got up to be freed. Then Phillips was arrested, subsequently convicted of two counts of armed robbery and one count of kidnapping, and sentenced to 140 years in prison. One year later, Angie returned to work, got to meet the police, and thanked them for saving her life. She could still picture her and her mother fighting on the day she was kidnapped and didn't want to be known like that. Category:1993 Category:West Virginia Category:Kidnappings Category:Robberies Category:Crimes